EU International Relations

Introduction
The European Union (hereinafter EU) can be described as a sui generis international actor, in other words, a global player. The EU has reached international agreements with countries all over the world, its external relations has become widespread. EU’s foreign policy is ideally linked to the concept of importance with compliance with human rights and democracy principles, which means in other words, conditionality policy. EU´s goal is to ensure that human rights are respected everywhere and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an important document in relation with that. Since the early 1990´s the EU has included human rights conditionality clauses in its international agreements, both in international trade agreements

When agreements and co-operation takes place with third countries, the EU demands countries to be in line with these policies and the same goes for the EU itself, that is to say, it is bound to respect these policies in its external relations.
The EU developed its external human rights policy by, inter alia, insisting on the insertion of specific human rights clauses in all agreements with third countries. In the event that countries would not insert them, the EU provided itself with the right of imposing economic sanctions.
As can be seen this evolution spans a long period of time, though it has still not become as effective as one would have hoped. The main obstacles relate to that, in some aspects, the enforcement mechanism seems to be ineffective and the mechanism lacks, what EU lacks most often, an appropriate sanction and suspension system. And that is related to the fact that human rights are often not effective when they should be legally enforcable.
Various agreements with numerous

Article 21 in the Lisbon Treaty is an important Article concerning external relations and it summons up EU as an international actor. In Article 21 it is stipulated that:
• the Union‘s actions on the international scene shall be guided by the principles of which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargelement and which it seeks to advance in the wider world: democracy, the rule of law, the universality and indivisibility of human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect for human dignity, the principles of equality and solidarity and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law. In relation to that the EU shall seek to develop relations and build partnerships with third countries, and international, regional or global organisations which share the principles mentioned in the last